Not a passing fancy

Guice is still new, so few productive applications for it exist outside of Google, one exception being the Struts2 web framework mentioned earlier, but its Google background and its use in AdWords will ensure that Guice won't end up as a passing fancy. A further indication of that is the third-party modules that now exist, including components that enable Guice to interact with Hibernate and with the DWR Ajax framework.

On the debit side, the project documentation is still fairly complicated, but this deficiency is offset to some extent by the user reports and instructions that are now starting to appear. From an architectural point of view, it should be noted that Guice's proprietary annotations make it difficult to reuse classes in non-Guice projects. Guice is, however, relatively easy to learn and to introduce – even into existing projects. A further advantage is that the framework can be installed in stages.

Tobias Lütticke works as Solution Architect in a ministry in Wellington, New Zealand.